Sanctuary
by sesshou-gal169
Summary: Maybe I can help; maybe I can save them... Don't be foolish, you're doing this to run away from the things you have to face. You sniveling coward! No, not again! please go away! Fine. I will leave. But you know I will return, for you live on my time...


**Liftoff**

Sanctuary

1. **Lift-off**

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes...."

I've answered this question a million times but it never seems to have any affect. I believe people continue to ask just because they are simply curious about why, why would any sane person do this, but are afraid or not allowed to ask me upfront about my personal reasons for offering myself up. For the money? For the risk? For the community service hours? I snicker to myself, startling the man attaching the heart rate monitor's electrodes to my chest. They all just sit there and wonder what possible explanation I could have to justify my actions.

And I personally haven't the heart to bring myself to dump my reason on them; and, after hearing what I had to say, they probably wouldn't have wanted me to have either. So therefore I answer them in the most logical and simple way that I can think of: "Yes".

Any other probing questions are put to a halt as the titanium doors swing open and let in a much appreciated wave of fresh air. The boss of the company I am currently being sent in by and several corporate lackeys march in with a slightly stoic and apprehensive air. As they walk in, I catch a glimpse of dark-blue silk peeking out from behind the group of gray and black suits. Leaning over (and nearly falling out of my seat in the process) I sit shocked to see the wife of the CEO weakly trailing behind the back of her husband in a formal mourning kimono. It lightens my heart to see that the stone-hearted man had allowed a lapse in his usual control and let his wife come to see off the one who was to save her daughter. Aww; I could have almost liked the guy if I didn't know the true story about his situation.

His company was a serious trouble. PhoenixTech was one of the most major video game manufacturers in Japan, and therefore the whole world. It had started out as a failing company that sprang up like the proverbial phoenix after Kawakami-san, the current CEO, bought it out and hired the most highly qualified, available people to fix it up. Soon he controlled the patents to the newest virtual reality gaming components in the world, and that proverbial bird started soaring. But just as Kawakami-san thought that nothing could go better in his plush life, his technicians made a breakthrough that no one had ever before thought possible within a million years.

They had managed to design a way to put you _inside_ the game.

Not just a silly view projected inside a helmet that made you feel as though you were seeing inside the game, but the _real deal_. Full sensory interaction. In other words, you could now possibly visit other worlds, other times, other places from the comfort of your own mind. It was to be a technical miracle if it worked.

Unfortunately, there were a few bumps on the road to success. The trials on the animals subjected to 'playing' the game were not promising. All of them ended up with the mice either going crazy or just zoning out into some other part of their tiny brains, never to return. So.... they took a risk and decided to move their subject level up to the most risky level they possibly could.

Human beings.

PhoentixTech put out a discreet add in a free newspaper distributed in Kamagasaki, Japan's largest slum, detailing a job offering that was taking up test subjects in a new video gaming study. About seventy-five people applied- mostly homeless, or jobless, or- even worse- foreigners.

After going through several vigorous mental and physical tests, four applicants made the final quota. The rest were sent home and the remaining four had their true posts explained to them: they were to be the first people sent into a true alternate, virtual reality. The prototype they were to test was, or was supposed to be, a model of feudal Japan. One of the quartet chickened out and was relocated in a small country off of the cost of Africa with a large stipend in his pocket and a note suggesting that he keep his mouth quiet or some more..._serious_ relocation (or rather, dislocation) would soon follow any information leak. The others decided to stay.

They were all induced at the same time, with the same circumstances, and the same instructions: just stay alive for as long as you can, complete the game. The game was supposed to end when a person died; and a link connected to the person's brain was supposed to bring them back into _real_ reality as soon as soon as their death occurred.

The way that the brain was hooked up to the machine was also supposed to manipulate a persons' sense of time: for every 'day' they were under, ten seconds passed in the real world. The trials were arranged to test approx. how long it would take for the average person to die and details on what it was like in the 'game'.

Then came the big moment. The subjects were prepped and set up and all of their bodily functions were being monitored (and _no,_ I do not mean farting or any other such bodily functions); everyone was induced.

And then all havoc broke loose.

All of the heart rate monitors spiked to dangerously high levels, and within milliseconds of being sent in, one of them came back. The man tore off the electrodes on his temples and keeled over gasping. "Dark...air......help...!"

Five seconds later the man was dead. He had died from a heart attack, and as none of the other people came out, it was assumed that they had made it past whatever the dead man had encountered.

The subjects were expected to stay in for about an hour (about one year in game time), and have by then have met some type of demise. They were closely monitored for the first hour, but when two hours passed the technicians started to get worried. Three days went by and they had still not returned.

Then the true tragedy struck. Mr. Kawakami's young daughter was playing in her father's office when she overheard her father talking to one of the technicians on the team.

"Don't call anyone, or alert the media. These people were chosen so that no one would miss them if something happened during the experiment." He scoffed, "No one cares about these people. No one will ever notice that they're gone. People probably won't even remember the ad we ran in that filthy newspaper.

"Now, I want that floor sealed up and round-the-clock surveillance on room five in case one of them wakes up. We can't let any of them leave after all of this…. NOW GO!"

"Yes, sir."

The girl heard the door opening to the office and, without a second thought, fled past her father, down the hallway and into the forbidden room. In a brash move of rebellion, before anyone could do anything, the child flung herself into one of the two remaining chairs and stuck the electrodes onto her head haphazardly.

"I'm going to go find them, daddy!" She smiled goofily, "they need my help!"

And then she was gone. Her heart rate spiked as the others had and then gradually fell back into its normal pattern. A ten-year old girl flung into virtual reality without any reason or rhyme. It just happened.

That is where I come in. I'm the retriever. I'm supposed to find the missing girl, and hopefully some of the other people as well when I go in. How I got this position is another story, for another time. All that matters now is that I'm here and I am going to help. I am going to help them.

Kawakami-san stands in front of me with a cold look and little hope.

"Good luck."

He initiates the game sequence. And then the world goes black; and I fall.

………………….

Goodbye.


End file.
